I don’t tend to complain much about FOX News for the same reason I didn’t hate on boy bands when I was nineteen – there wasn’t any point to it, and they weren’t being made for me, so who cares what I think?

But what I do think is interesting is that, at least in regard to the picture-of-Obama-glancing-downward-as-a-girl-walks-by-so-it-looks-like-he’s-checking-out-her-ass thing going around, FOX isn’t even shooting for the pretense of being a serious news organization. They’re going straight-up Daily Mail style snickering.

It’s a smart move, kinda, in that shit like that sells. The Mail has a circulation six times that of the Guardian, and Perez Hilton and TMZ both outstrip the Huffington Post in terms of hits per day. And Rupert Murdoch and the FOX team are smart folks – but you gotta wonder if it’s short-sighted to move in the direction of showing every picture of the President with a bunch of penises drawn around his head. Because that’s kinda where this is headed.

Last year, I remember there was a big stink in the UK over this shot of David Beckham at a Laker’s game where it looks like he’s kinda checking out a cheerleader’s butt. At the time, I wrote that it highlighted one of the major differences between the UK and US media – that over there, they had a smart folks press and a retards press, and never the twain shall meet, while back in America, we get a press that’s kind of both at the same time.

Then, a year later, FOX goes ahead and spends days on a story about the exact same thing that the Mail was wasting time on, and without even the attempts at high-mindedness that had defined the American approach to this sort of thing, and now, hell – time for the penis drawings on his face and stuff, I guess.